Wycliffe and the Beales

by W.J. Burley

Genres: Mystery; Cozy Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A mysterious death ... an eccentric family living on the edge of Dartmoor ... And Chief Superintendent Wycliffe has one of his most complex cases to date. The Beales are an odd, reclusive family living in Ashill House, on the edge of Dartmoor: old Simon has withdrawn from active life; Nicholas and Gertrude confine themselves respectively to war games and the bottle; young Edward takes long painting expeditions on the moor. Only Frank Vicary, Gertrude's husband, is able to run the family business with enough drive to compensate for the failings of the others. When there is a murder in the village, there seems no reason to connect it with the Beales. But once Chief Superintendent Wycliffe is on the case, his investigation uncovers far more than he - or the Beales - anticipated ... Why readers love W.J. Burley: 'First-class, old-time, hyper-ingenious whodunit.' Observer 'You can always count on Wycliffe ... he inevitably guarantees a good story, convincing characters and appealing landscape ' Financial Times 'Wycliffe teases out the truth with delicate skill that leaves the reader intrigued and convinced.' Mail on Sunday 'Gripping.' The Times Fans of Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid and Peter Robinson will love W.J. Burley: 1. Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy 2. Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat 3. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi 4. Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place 5. Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street 6. Wycliffe and the Pea-Green Boat 7. Wycliffe and the School Bullies 8. Wycliffe and the Scapegoat 9. Wycliffe in Paul's Court 10. Wycliffe's Wild Goose Chase 11. Wycliffe and the Beales 12. Wycliffe and the Four Jacks 13. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin 14. Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue 15. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web 16. Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death 17. Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist 18. Wycliffe and the Last Rites 19. Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery 20. Wycliffe and the House of Fear 21. Wycliffe and the Redhead 22. Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine * Each Inspector Wycliffe novel can be read as part of a series or as a standalone*

Release date: December 16, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 192

Sample

Bunny Newcombe must have had a proper first name but even contemporaries who had been at school with him had forgotten what it was. He had lived all the forty-four years of his life in a cottage on the outskirts of the village and for several months, since the death of his mother, he had lived there alone. On leaving school Bunny had started out as a rabbit catcher but myxomatosis had put an early stop to that and so he had drifted into casual work around the village and on neighbouring farms. In the weeks and months following his mother’s death he had grown to look more and more like a tramp, his skin had acquired a smooth patina of ingrained dirt and he was rarely seen without a greyish stubble on his chin and upper lip. Recently, too, he had shown less interest in getting work and this had led to the belief that his mother must have left him some money.

Bunny knew and was known to everybody but he had no close friends; he spent his evenings at the village pub where he was as much at home as the landlord, and the last evening of his life was passed like any other. He sat in his corner near the bar, drank his usual ration then, at a little before half-past ten, he emptied his final glass, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and got to his feet. He was rarely drunk but by this time of night he had had enough.

‘’Night all!’

A chorus of good-nights followed by a general laugh. Bunny was tolerated; a kind of mascot. He was barely five feet four in height with the proportions of a barrel. He walked with deliberate, waddling steps to the door and out into the night.

Outside, he paused to accustom himself to the relative darkness and to the fresh, moist moorland air, then he crossed the Green, passed the tall iron gates of Ashill, and turned off to his right down a narrow lane which had the high brick wall of Ashill estate on one side and trees on the other. Although it was a clear night with a half-moon, it was dark under the trees but his steps never faltered and he plodded on like a tired old horse returning to stable.

Bunny rarely indulged in abstract thought and by late evening he was incapable of much organized thinking of any sort; his consciousness was sufficiently engaged with present sensations, with random samples from a rag-bag of memories, and with vague anticipatory longings and resolves. At this present moment he was thinking that he wanted to pee, that it would be a relief to get his boots off and drop into bed, that nobody had ever made a rabbit pie to equal his mother’s.

But as a background to these immediate preoccupations his mood was euphoric; Bunny was convinced of a future very different from the past, a feeling which he summed up in the words, ‘I’ll show the bastards!’ And these words he muttered to himself from time to time like a charm.

Another couple of hundred yards and he came to Quarry House, an oddly elegant little house where the Gould sisters lived – twins in their late thirties, who dressed alike and held themselves aloof from the villagers. Bunny, stung by the memory of a recent encounter, muttered again, ‘I’ll show the bastards!’

From this point he could hear the steady, muffled roar of the waterfall in the grounds of Ashill; a sound which had provided a constant background to his whole life from that very instant when his ears had first opened to the world about him.

Not far from the Goulds’ house there was a seat, dating from a time when the parish council had shown a passing interest in the lane. It was too dark to see the seat or anyone on it at all clearly but he could hear whisperings and chucklings. He called out, ‘You watch yourself, Nancy Gratton, or you’ll need re-bushing before you drag ’im into church!’

A boy’s voice came out of the darkness, clear and without rancour, ‘Get ’ome you ol’ flea-bag an’ mind your own business!’

From that point the lane descended more steeply, its surface broken by winter frosts and scoured by rains. A few more yards and, clear of the trees, he could see his own cottage, its whitewashed walls standing out in the moonlight.

He unlatched the gate, which screeched on its hinges, and entered the yard. Small scuffling noises came from rabbit hutches against one wall and he said aloud, ‘Goodnight, my beauties!’ He lowered the flap on the hen house where the birds had gone to roost, attended to his own needs in an outside privy, then let himself into the cottage by the back door. He passed through a lean-to scullery to the kitchen in almost total darkness but there he struck a match and lit a candle he had left standing on a corner of the table. The scene came to flickering life: the big square table littered with saucepans, dishes, cans, bottles and packets; a dresser with only a few oddments of china left on the shelves; a window with a curtain dragged across it, sagging in the middle.

Bunny had un uncomfortable moment as it occurred to him what his mother would have said and done had she come back to find such squalor. But his mother would never come back – she couldn’t; she was dead. Bunny bolstered his ego with another ‘I’ll show the bastards!’ Then he took the candle and, holding it high in front of him, climbed the steep, narrow stairs. As his head came above the level of the upper floor he experienced a vicious jab of stunning pain which shot through his skull; he lost consciousness, staggered, and fell backwards down the stairs. In falling, life deserted the little fat man and there began at once those complex changes which would ultimately restore his body to Mother Earth. Bunny had died in the cottage where he had been born and where he had spent the forty-four years of his relatively untroubled existence.

Another balmy spring day, with Nature propagating in indecent haste. Wycliffe and his wife had spent most of their weekend in the vegetable garden, for this was the year when Helen had made up her mind on self-sufficiency in vegetables and soft fruit. Given a completely free hand she might have acquired an adjoining field and extended her activities to include a goat or two, even a Dexter cow; but he set the limit of animal husbandry at one fastidious and condescending cat who considered that he contributed more than his share to the commonwealth merely by being there.

Now it was Monday morning but Wycliffe found that the feeling of mellow tranquillity lingered, though his hands were scratched and galled. It was the slim file of weekend reports and the little bundle of inter-office memoranda on his desk which seemed unreal. He had difficulty in concentrating his attention; his eyes kept straying to the window where he could glimpse the tops of silver birch trees on the far side of the highway, their leaves breaking out in a greenish haze against the blue of the sky.

It was not long since he had refused to be considered for the post of Deputy Chief Constable, soon to fall vacant. He had no regrets; the job would have cut him off from the kind of police work which gave him most satisfaction, and saddled him with more administration, which he loathed. But the fact remained, he was now at the top of his particular tree, and there he would stay for the rest of his career in the force. There was something definitive and final about the thought which made him vaguely depressed whenever it entered his mind.

Back to reality – reality in the shape of reports of all serious or potentially serious crime in the two counties. A quiet weekend, nothing to get worked up about: a couple of muggings, but against that, the mugger had been caught; half-a-dozen break-ins, a ‘domestic’ involving GBH … He turned to his mail but the telephone rang. ‘Wycliffe.’

Information Room reporting a 999-call from a member of the public in the village of Washford: ‘A chap known as Bunny Newcombe has been found dead in his cottage where he lived alone. The village postman found him; he’s been shot through the head. No weapon at the scene.’

‘A shot-gun wound?’

‘Not according to the postman, who seems to know what he’s talking about.’

‘You’ve notified Newton sub-division?’

‘Mr Kersey is on his way to Washford now, sir.’

Kersey, newly appointed detective inspector, was beginning his apprenticeship out in the sticks as senior CID officer in a large rural sub-division based on the market town of Newton. After fifteen years as a city ‘jack’ he was now finding out what it was like to live with straw in his hair.

Half-an-hour later Information Room called again. Kersey had confirmed the report by radio and requested assistance in what he believed to be a murder inquiry.

Wycliffe gave routine instructions; there was no need for him to be involved at this stage but on such a morning the office was poor competition. He called in his personal assistant: ‘I shall be in Washford if you want me, Diane.’

Diane looked reproachfully at the unopened mail and at the little pile of inter-departmental memoranda. ‘When will you be back?’

‘I’ve no idea!’ He said it with the bravado of a rebellious schoolboy.

Washford was twenty miles away in a fold of the southern moor, a village of granite and slate which looked as though it had grown out of the moor itself and, in a sense, it had. The centre of the village was the Green, bordered by the pub, the school, the church, and Ashill – home of the Beale family. A single street bisected the village, known as North Street above, and South Street below, the Green.

Wycliffe drove up South Street from the Newton road and parked with other cars near the church and under the beeches which fringed the Green. One of the parked vehicles was a police patrol car and there was an officer on radio watch. Opposite the church a smug Regency house with an ironwork balcony was set back behind a high wall and only visible through tall wrought-iron gates.

As Wycliffe got out of his car his first impression was of silence; the village had a Marie Celeste air. He had grown up in such a village – not in the West Country, but where the Black Mountains trail their skirts over the Welsh border into Herefordshire, and what he remembered most about his village was this silent stillness. Then he heard the shrill voice of a woman teacher through the open windows of the nearby school; a little later he became aware of the stream which slid swiftly by in its culvert with a continuous ripple of sound, and now and again came the ‘ping’ of a shop door bell.

The constable on radio watch directed him: ‘Down the lane by Ashill, sir. You pass a funny little house on your right; keep on for another couple of hundred yards and you come to a cottage – a tumbled-down sort of place – you’ll find Mr Kersey there, sir.’

‘Isn’t Ashill the Beales’ place?’

‘That’s right, sir. Simon, the old man, lives there with all the family as far as I know.’

Beales’ Household Stores, an old-established family business with branches in several towns. A few years back, the firm had taken on a new lease of life with the complete rebuilding of their store in the city centre and the opening of several cash-and-carry depots strategically scattered over the two counties. Wycliffe had met old Simon a couple of times at civic soirées.

Unknowing, Wycliffe followed in the footsteps of Bunny Newcombe. He had the high wall of Ashill gardens on his right and a screen of beeches on his left; the trees arched overhead, filtering the sunlight. He could hear the rippling of the stream close at hand and the more distant sound of a waterfall or mill race. Where the wall came to an end there was a small pink house with white woodwork and dormer windows – like a doll’s house – with Quarry House on the gate. To that point the lane was well surfaced and maintained, but beyond, it degenerated into a rutted track, fatal to the suspension of any vehicle less robust than a farm tractor. But the while walls of Newcombe’s cottage were in sight.

The cottage must certainly have been recorded in the doomsday book of some council official as ‘sub-standard’ or, more probably, ‘unfit for human habitation’. No electricity, no piped water, no proper sanitation, not even a road … Its whitewashed walls supported a roof where thatch had been replaced by corrugated asbestos, itself now green with moss. The backyard, with its collection of rural junk, reminded Wycliffe of the backyards of his childhood; a rusting milk-churn, part of a chain-harrow, a broken cartwheel and the inevitable mangle … with nettles growing up through it all. There was a sentry-box privy, and a henhouse in which the hens clucked in protest against their confinement; there were hutches where rabbits shuffled and thumped, demanding to be fed … Somebody would have to see to the livestock.

Kersey was standing at the door of the cottage with a uniformed constable. A plank on bricks had been laid across the yard to avoid disturbing or effacing traces which the killer had almost certainly not left.

‘The local GP has certified death,’ Kersey said. ‘He didn’t have much option. Now we’re waiting for the pathologist. This is PC Miller, sir, community officer for the subsection.’

A constable with several years’ service and a soft tongue to turn away wrath; immaculately turned out, shop-window of the force.

‘Let’s have a look.’

The lean-to with its stone sink and pump, then the kitchen, so dimly lit that he had to wait for his eyes to accommodate; a sickly smell of decaying food and a buzzing of bluebottles; a littered table, a dresser with remnants of crockery on its shelves, a cooking range and a few kitchen chairs. Newcombe’s body lay in a heap at the foot of stairs which led to the rooms above. His eyes were open and glazed over; his cap had fallen off and was lying on the floor. He was almost bald and the whiteness of his scalp contrasted oddly with the weather-tan and grime on his forehead and face. The wound of entry was neat and round but the bullet must have torn its way out. A hand-gun, fired at fairly close range. Odd, that! When rural tensions explode into shooting the weapon is almost always a shot-gun. And this little man who looked like a tramp – why would anyone want to shoot him anyway?

Wycliffe had no idea of the trouble he would have, finding an answer to that one. He returned to the backyard, to Kersey and the constable.

‘I gather the postman found him?’

Kersey nodded. ‘Newcombe didn’t have much post but whenever the postman did call he would find him here in the yard, feeding his rabbits. This morning, with the hens still shut up and nobody about he wondered if Bunny had been taken ill, so he opened the door and called out.’

‘The door wasn’t locked?’

‘No, but that doesn’t mean much, they don’t go in for locking up round here, apparently.’

People hadn’t locked their doors in Wycliffe’s village either.

‘Of course the postman went in and found him.’

Wycliffe turned to the constable. ‘Do you know anything of the dead man?’

Miller was flicking whitewash off his uniform with a handkerchief. ‘I knew him pretty well, sir. He was the village odd-job man but he hasn’t done much lately – not since his mother died. Occasionally he would lend Sammy Pugh a hand in his scrap yard down on the Newton road. Sammy is a rogue; he was nicked for receiving a couple of years back and I wouldn’t put it past Newcombe to turn a dishonest penny if he got the chance, but nothing on any scale; nothing organized.’

‘Yet somebody shot him.’

Wycliffe got a cautious sidelong glance from the constable. ‘Yes, somebody did, sir, but I can’t think who would want to or why.’

‘Any relatives or close friends you know of who should be told?’

Miller eased the strap of his helmet. ‘The only relative I know of is an aunt – a Mrs Fretwell, she’s the wife of our local builder and undertaker and I think she’s his father’s sister. As to friends, I don’t think he had any; he was a loner.’

Wycliffe said, ‘See his aunt and make sure she knows what’s happening. Ask her if there are any other relatives.’

A sound of cars further up the lane and a little later Sergeant Smith arrived with his photographic gear and three detectives from Wycliffe’s headquarters squad. Dr Franks, the pathologist, followed almost at once.

Franks, bald and shiny as ever, greeted Wycliffe with his usual bonhomie and was taken into the kitchen.

‘God! This place stinks. I can’t do much with him here, that’s for sure.’

He waited while Smith took a series of shots from different angles then made his preliminary examination.

‘Not much I can tell you, Charles, that you can’t see for yourself. He was shot, probably at a couple of feet, with a hand-gun; the bullet passed through his head carrying with it some of his brains and making a mess on the stairs. He’s been dead between twelve and fifteen hours, I should think.’

Franks looked about for somewhere to wash his hands and finding nowhere wiped them on a white linen handkerchief. ‘Of course, other features may turn up in the course of the P.M. but who wants other features with a hole in the head?’

Franks retreated into the yard and the sunshine and looked around with acute distaste. ‘The amenities of rural life I can do without, Charles. Be a good chap and get him over to me sharpish; I had plans for today.’

Kersey said, ‘The van is here; the driver managed to back up off the Newton road. I. . .